Voter suppression

URL https://Persagen.com/docs/voter_suppression.html
Sources Persagen.com  |  Wikipedia  |  other sources (cited in situ)
Source URL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_suppression
Title Voter suppression
Date published 2022-01-18
Curation date 2022-01-18
Curator Dr. Victoria A. Stuart, Ph.D.
Modified
Editorial practice Refer here  |  Date format: yyyy-mm-dd
Summary Voter suppression is a strategy used to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting. It is distinguished from political campaigning in that campaigning attempts to change likely voting behavior by changing the opinions of potential voters through persuasion and organization, activating otherwise inactive voters, or registering new supporters. Voter suppression, instead, attempts to reduce the number of voters who might vote against a candidate or proposition.
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    Background

    Voter suppression is a strategy used to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting. It is distinguished from political campaigning in that campaigning attempts to change likely voting behavior by changing the opinions of potential voters through persuasion and organization, activating otherwise inactive voters, or registering new supporters. Voter suppression, instead, attempts to reduce the number of voters who might vote against a candidate or proposition.

    The tactics of voter suppression range from minor changes that make voting less convenient, to physically intimidating prospective voters and even physically attacking prospective voters, which is illegal. Voter suppression can be effective if a significant number of voters are intimidated or disenfranchised. In 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Shelby v. Holder that voting laws had resulted in voter suppression and voter discrimination.

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    Voter Suppression in Canada

    Shortly before the Canadian 2011 Federal Election, vote suppression tactics were exercised by issuing robocalls and live calls to falsely advise voters that their polling station had changed. The locations offered by these messages were intentionally false, often to lead voters several hours from the correct stations, and often identified themselves illegally as coming from Elections Canada.

    In litigation brought by The Council of Canadians, a federal court found that such fraud had occurred and had probably been perpetrated by someone with access to the Conservative Party of Canada's voter database, including its information about voter preferences. The court stated that the evidence did not prove that the Conservative Party of Canada or its successful candidates were directly involved. It did, however, criticize the Conservative Party of Canada for making "little effort to assist with the investigation". The court did not annul the result in any of six electoral ridings where the electoral fraud had occurred, because it concluded that the number of votes affected had been too small to affect the outcome.

    Voter suppression in the United States

  • Main article: Voter suppression in the United States
  • In the United States, elections are administered locally, and forms of voter suppression vary among jurisdictions. At the founding of the United States, the right to vote in most states was limited to property-owning white males. Over time, the right to vote was formally granted to racial minorities, women, and youth. During the later 19th and early 20th centuries, Southern states  [Southern United States] passed Jim Crow laws to suppress poor and racial minority voters - such laws included poll taxes,   literacy tests, and grandfather clauses. Most of these voter suppression tactics were made illegal after the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Even after the repeal of the Jim Crow laws that were implemented by these statutes, there have been repetitive incidents of racial discrimination against voters in Southern States. Specifically, in 2018, 87,000 people in Georgia were unable to vote because of late registration. Many of the states with the strictest voting regulations are swing states, which have been enacted primarily by politicians who represent the Republican Party. According to AMP Reports, many people who were predicted to be in favor of voting for the Democratic Party had their ballot dismissed, as the study showed in an analysis that "A disproportionate number of those potential voters were people of color or young voters, groups that typically favor Democrats." The history of the previous Jim Crow regulations in the Southern states affects the voter suppression today because people that fall into the minority category often have their vote dismissed, due to manipulation of voting regulations.

    In 2013, voter ID laws arose following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to strike down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which some argue amounts to voter suppression against African-Americans.

    In Texas, a voter ID law requiring a driver's license, passport, military identification, or gun permit, was repeatedly found to be intentionally discriminatory. Texas's election laws could be put back under the control of the U.S. Department of Justice  [United States Department of Justice]. Under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, however, the U.S. Department of Justice has expressed support for Texas's ID law. Jeff Sessions was accused by Coretta Scott King in 1986 of trying to suppress the Black vote. A similar voter ID law in North Dakota, which would have disenfranchised large numbers of Native Americans, was also overturned.

    In Wisconsin, a federal judge found that the state's restrictive voter ID law led to "real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections, particularly in minority communities"; and, given that there was no evidence of widespread voter impersonation in Wisconsin, found that the law was "a cure worse than the disease." In addition to imposing strict voter ID requirements, the law cut back on early voting, required people to live in a ward for at least 28 days before voting, and prohibited emailing absentee ballots to voters.

    Other controversial measures include shutting down Department of Motor Vehicles offices in minority neighborhoods, making it more difficult for residents to obtain voter IDs; shutting down polling places in minority neighborhoods; systematically depriving precincts in minority neighborhoods of the resources they need to operate efficiently, such as poll workers and voting machines; and purging voters from the voter rolls shortly before an election.

    Often, voter fraud is cited as a justification for such laws even when the incidence of voter fraud is low. In Iowa, lawmakers passed a strict voter ID law with the potential to disenfranchise 260,000 voters. Out of 1.6 million votes cast in Iowa in 2016, there were only 10 allegations of voter fraud; none were cases of impersonation that a voter ID law could have prevented. Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, the architect of the bill, admitted, "We've not experienced widespread voter fraud in Iowa."

    In May 2017, President Donald Trump established the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, for the purpose of preventing voter fraud. Critics have suggested its true purpose is voter suppression. Trump's Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity is led by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a staunch advocate of strict voter ID laws and a proponent of the Crosscheck system  [Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program]. ne>Crosscheck< is a national database designed to check for voters who are registered in more than one state by comparing names and dates of birth. Researchers at Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania,   Harvard University, and Microsoft found that for every legitimate instance of double registration it finds, Crosscheck's algorithm returns approximately 200 false positives. Kris Kobach has been repeatedly sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for trying to restrict voting rights in Kansas.

    Social Media Impact on Voting Suppression

    Social media platforms, specifically Facebook, contains 2.4 billion active users. The content in regards to election voting on social media includes misinformation and disinformation, which contributes to voter suppression. The Brennan Center for Justice identifies several kinds of "voter suppression messages" used by Russia-linked accounts in the 2016 United States presidential election: misinformation about the time or location for voting, promoting attacks against Clinton to discourage supporters, and urging voters to boycott the election or to cast a vote for a third-party candidate.


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    Additional Reading

  • [📌 pinned article] [Truthout.org, 2022-01-18] Republicans, Aided by Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, Are Stonewalling Voting Rights Bill.


  • [ReadSludge.com, 2022-01-18] Major U.S. Companies Slam Voter Suppression Laws Then Donate to Their Sponsors.  The companies' donations appear to contradict their public statements in support of voting rights.


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